She wanted to beg the black boys not to kick her anymore. Not in the breasts. Was that what was taught in the auditorium by the New York City police? She tried to remember. Her hands were tied behind her with the electric cord. No. The police did not tell you what to do when they tied you up and put out your eye with an ice pick.

The New York City police told you how to get mugged. They never gave old people lectures on how to get killed. Maybe if they got more money, they would teach you how to be murdered as well as mugged. Mrs. Mueller thought these things in a pain-crazed mind that blended Nazi Germany and her slum apartment.

She wanted to tell the laughing black boys to kick her somewhere else. Not in the breasts because that hurt too much. Would it be racist to ask blacks to kick you somewhere else? She did not want to be a racist. She saw what racism had done.

But Jews never beat her up. You never had to fear for your life in a Jewish neighborhood. This had been a Jewish neighborhood when she and Gerd had moved in. They were German and thought there might be some trouble because of what the Nazis had done. There was no trouble. There was no trouble with the Irish who had lived two blocks over. Or the Poles. Or the Italians on the other side of the Grand Concourse.

But then a law was passed. And. the law said it was bad to keep people out of neighborhoods. Black people. And everyone was to be taught to do the right thing. This was America. Everyone had to do the right thing.

A woman had come to talk. She taught at a university. She had told everyone in the community center about George Washington Carver, a black man, and all the other nice black people and how good blacks were and how bad people who hated them were and it was a bad thing to hate blacks. Gerd, who was alive then, had translated for Mrs. Mueller. He was so smart. He knew so much and learned so quickly. He had been an engineer. If he were alive, maybe he could make the boys understand not to kick her in the breasts but somewhere else. No, they didn't want anything. They were just having fun with her old body.